


Ain't Nothing But Tired

by andacus



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Broody, F/M, It's from season 4, Multi, Sexy, between seasons speculation, really old fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-17
Updated: 2015-04-17
Packaged: 2018-03-23 09:37:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3763264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andacus/pseuds/andacus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's almost pointless by the time they rescue Stefan and save the world.  Somehow she thought it would feel victorious.  All she feels is tired.</p>
<p>Somewhere along the way, she'd given up, given in.  No one says it, but they all think it and their searching becomes a little more like habit, one foot thoughtlessly stepping in front of the other, on thing after another, motion after pointless motion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ain't Nothing But Tired

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Here's an older story I never posted for some strange reason. It's a departure from my usual style, so any feedback is greatly appreciated. It was written back between seasons three and four when Ripper Stefan had just been set free and no one knew quite what that meant yet and apparently I was feeling moody. Hope it holds up now that we're well past that on the show. Thanks for reading!

Somewhere along the way, she'd given up, given in. No one says it, but they all think it and their searching becomes a little more like habit, one foot thoughtlessly stepping in front of the other, on thing after another, motion after pointless motion. 

They love him, they all love him and for years they're determined to see him saved. For years they follow and seek and find nothing and everything. It's a war fought with teeth and hands and blood and magic until finally there aren't enough soldiers left to carry on and they’ve almost forgotten why they’re fighting in the first place. 

It's a tragedy to the point of comedy, really, and Elena can never laugh without crying anymore.

++

It’s dark in their little hotel room when she climbs into his bed, begging, pleading to just feel something other than tired. He is reluctant, holding his breath and balling his fists, the cords of tension taut in his arms and thighs. She slips a hand across his chest, acts like she didn’t mean to.

He relents almost immediately, strong hands hot on her thighs, teeth sliding over her ribs. Damon’s not Stefan and she knows it, but suddenly she’s so aware of it that her body trembles with fear and relief and betrayal and lust.

He fucks like he’s got nothing left in the world but her, and in some ways she supposes that’s true. It’s all she can do not to just come and cling and gasp, it’s frantic and he’s too strong, too desperate. It’s fucking freeing. 

Stefan never did this, never wanted her so desperately that he stopped worrying about who was having the better time and just felt his way around her body; lips and cock and hands and breasts – no fault, no guilt, no blame. But Damon doesn’t know any other way and some cold, hard knot inside of her loosens with that revelation.

She thinks it might be her soul. Somehow, she can’t bring herself to care.

++

Stefan spends his time in the attic when they finally carry him home. He’s broken in all the ways he can be and Elena does her best to be the girl she thinks he needs, the girl she was back then. But she’s not that girl and it’s like playing with smoke and shadows, she feels lost and transparent.

She feels like lies.

So she simply tells him, “Fuck it,” and turns away. It’s crude and harsh and angry, but that’s what she’s become, that’s what this war has made her. Tired, scarred and strong, she leaves him there with his pain and his wars. This time she is the one leaving.

She wasn’t helping anyway and they both knew it.

++

I love Stefan. It will always be Stefan. She hasn't said these words in a long time. She thinks them though, she thinks them in an ever-expanding loop; the space between words wider with every passing day. The space between her and Stefan and the idea of love so wide now that she thinks fondly on it as a passing fancy, a memory of a happy day and little more than that.

She still feels like lies, though.

++

It was Damon, in the end, who had the nerve to turn her. She forgives him immediately because she understands now, she sees just what the emptiness has sprouted in him – it’s a beast of a thing, twisted and grotesque, but it shouldn’t be there. 

Stefan’s curse may be his empathy, but Damon’s curse is his soul.

++

They play house for close to a decade, a disturbing, macabre version of the American Dream, while she learns to behave, while she becomes accustomed to being a monster. She struggles, sometimes to the point of self-combustion, but somehow they keep her sane.

Damon is always patient, which is unsettling because it isn’t what she expected, it isn’t the way she understands him. He’s supposed to be impulsive and reckless and impatient, but he is none of these things, none of the things she had learned to accept. 

It is the days when he loses his temper, when he wades into a glass of bourbon, that Elena knows he loves her. He always did let the ones he loves drive him crazy.

But other days, days when he’s so even and calm that it makes her want to scream, she can’t help but want to wound him, to tear down the blood-stained picket fence they’ve erected around themselves, to wound them both. But she was never very good at being vindictive, even now, after everything.

It’s still confusing and she can’t always reconcile her emotions with her desires with her memories. Stefan is there, he’s always there, hiding in her very being, but she knows she doesn’t love him, not the way she did, full of hope and forgiveness and faith. He lost that when they both lost their souls. Still, he haunts her.

When Damon's there, curled around her, fingers splayed across her skin, she never wishes it was Stefan. Except when she does.

Sometimes, when they've had a little too much whiskey, she lets them both touch her - this man who saved her once upon a time and the man who damned her. 

She never looks at Stefan.

 

++

 

They span the decades tied together, an unholy trio, cursed and in love. 

Caroline visits sometimes, always back from some exotic place with gifts and stories that they will never hope to match, sequestered as they are in their shared isolation.

“Oh my god, Elena,” Caroline says as she dumps a pile of Mardi Gras beads on the couch. “You have to get out of this house.”

What Caroline will never understand is that she doesn’t want to, she accepts that she (they) deserve this.

++

Elena draws Damon into her bed that night, an exercise in self-hatred. She wants Caroline to hear, to know the dirty secret that she’s only whispered in pants and puffs, the secret that the three of them know and never say.

She lets him press fingertips to her spine and she lets him slide slowly into her like all of the million times before and she hates herself. 

She loves him the most.

++

Caroline won’t judge though and that kills them all a little. They seek judgment because their own is too thin, too much like vapor and ghosts. But Caroline will never give them that and they all knew it, it was a faulty hope, like all the rest.

And when Caroline leaves, her face a little sad and her voice a little hollow, Elena slides back into her life, slips calmly under the waters once more.

She always does.


End file.
